Customer Reviews

Experts v.3.5: A Comprehensive d20/OGL Sourcebook for Fantasy Role-Playing Games

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I previously reviewed Experts for the D20 Fantasy 3.0 system, so I was pleasantly surprised when I stumbled across the Skirmisher Game Development Group at a Role-Playing Game Association (RPGA) game of Living Greyhawk at Gen Con. It wasn't long before I walked away with several review copies of just about everything they've ever published.

Since I've already reviewed the book, I will only address what's new in Experts v3.5.

Upon opening the book, it's obvious that Experts has been redesigned with a new layout. There's plenty of margin space, perhaps too much. When they're not empty, the margins are filled with quotes from a variety of sources, all describing the particular expert in question. It's a nice touch.

The artwork is all clear black-and-white, with few color conversions. There's a lot of new clip art that's fantasy-oriented. And Sharon Daugherty's art, which were primarily pencil drawings and starkly out of character with the rest of the work, are much less in evidence.

A new core class is introduced titled the specialist. The purpose of the class is to provide a viable Player Character (PC) class for experts of various types, presumably as an alternative to the Non-Player Character (NPC) expert class. The differences are marginal: The specialist has a better Fortitude save and provides Bonus Feats or New Skills. The New Skill selection is a class skill, which provides the specialist with a total of 14 class skills (10 to choose from, just like the expert, and 4 from the class progression). The specialist also gets bonus feats like a fighter, only the feats are specifically for experts. All in all, "Specialists are to Experts what Fighters are to NPC Warriors." Still, Experts recommends that NPC classes (like an expert) have a Level Adjustment of -1, to make up for their weaker abilities. The specialist isn't a necessity to use the book, but it does provide a viable option for PCs who want an interesting background that's not as underpowered as NPC classes.

Much of the rest of the book focuses on expanding the expert class. While the DMG essentially covers the wide variety of experts by providing 10 class skills for them to choose from, Experts tweaks them further by categorizing the different types into metaclasses. There are craftsmen, entertainers, professionals, scholars, and tradesmen. Each is given the full class treatment, including typical adventurers of the class, characteristics of the class, suggested alignment, common religion, class background, races who are usually a member of the class, and how the class interacts with other classes. This is a vast improvement over the way Experts 3.0 dealt with classes, which was more the old Dungeons & Dragons 2.0 style of "kits." This book feels like it's really a 3.5 product.

Every walk of life is covered, from alchemist to armorer, blacksmith to barrister, cartographer to courtesan. In addition to the aforementioned descriptions, each expert includes starting packages and class abilities. For example, astronomers gain abilities like Peerless Temporal Sense, Cosmic Nerve, and Nighttime Adaptation, in addition to the expert class abilities. Some are more relevant and interesting than others. In my own campaign, the actor, courtesan, merchant, sailor, and slaver descriptions were most useful. Since I DM an Arcanis campaign, complete with Roman-style politics, the sidebar about slaves on page 85 was very useful.

A smattering of prestige classes is included in the first of nine (!) appendices. The book really only takes up 90 pages; the remaining 86 pages dedicated to the appendices. The prestige classes include the guildmaster, militia leader, and spellcrafter. They're all interesting, but seem to proscribe to the belief that there's a class for everything. Thus, militia leaders seem awfully powerful; at 10th-level, a militia leader can use his Final Defense ability for 10 rounds, during which time he gains a +2 bonus to AC, +2 bonus to saving throws, 5/- damage reduction, and +10 hit points. Damage reduction that rivals a 19th-level barbarian? I pity the fools who attack that village!

In the next appendix, various Craft, Knowledge, and Profession skills are detailed. This is as it should be; there's far too many new skills added to most D20 supplements that fails to take into account the fertile territory of making any of the skills a Craft, Knowledge, or Profession skill. Each is given the full treatment as well as how they interact with each other. Profession (Bartender) lists Difficulty Classes (DC) for doing everything from cleaning a glass to listening to a drunk to ejecting a half-orc. Halflings receive a +2 racial bonus to Profession (Bartender) and characters with the skill receive a +2 bonus to Appraise checks to determine the value of alcoholic drinks. This appendix also includes such goodies as magical properties of herbs, Smell and Taste skills to accompany Listen and Spot, and finally Read Magic Text for experts who want to use magical scrolls but not the Use Magic Device skill.

The third appendix has new feats, but they are all effectively just feats that provide bonuses to skills. The fourth appendix includes 14 pages of expert NPCs, certainly useful for a harried DM. The fifth appendix covers a small group of magical items that involve the aforementioned skills. The remaining appendixes cover creating a guild, cost of expert services, awarding experience points to experts for non-combat actions, and expert work areas.

The expert work areas appendix has an innovative approach, using three-dimensional snapshots of models from the Miniature Building Authority and Dwarven Forge. The problem is that the only way to do these photos justice is to print them in color. In black and white, the photos lose detail. They are certainly not a replacement for a clean black-and-white map. Nor are there five-foot grids to make them scannable/printable for miniature play.

Despite its flaws, Experts is a huge leap forward in expanding an oft-neglected expert class in D&D 3.5. It's well worth the money for harried DMs and players who really do want their PC to start out as a farmer or blacksmith.

Michael Varhola's 3.5 compatible reboot of Experts is a must have for any DM. It is a formidable work, expanding a core NPC class (the Expert obviously) and providing options for using it as a PC class. It can also be used to rapidly generate particular common experts on the fly when your game takes an unexpected turn.

The work takes a modular approach, its majority being a breakdown of typical Experts broken down into logical categories: Craftsmen, Entertainers, Professionals, Scholars, and Tradesman. This alone makes for a fantastic time saving tool for any DM who suddenly needs an NPC. Each description give extensive background along with a listing of which skills and feats an expert of this type would have allowing easy development of an NPC of any level.

In addition to this solid core of data there is an array of new material which upgrades the Expert to a PC playable core class (the Specialist). The new skills, feats, and magic items presented make this an appealing and interesting alternative to the thief for those wanting a skill based class.

This is truly the book that allows the creative DM to fully flesh out as much of his game world as he may wish to. In my own campaigns it is now considered a Core Book along with the PH and DMG!

Six Stars out of Five! Keep 'em coming Skirmisher!

The original "Experts", one of the early non-adventure module d20 sourcebooks, was a godsend to GMs who wanted to flesh out their campaign worlds with living, breathing NPCs. It also provided players with invaluable detail for those visits to town to get a sage to answer a question, find a healer, sell your loot and such - plus background material for their own PCs, who might have apprenticed to an expert, or come from an expert's family.

Not only does Experts v.3.5 update all the crunchy bits (rules/mechanics) to make them compatible with D&D 3.5, but it adds:
- New skills
- New feats
- New Expert classes
- New adventure scenarios

Whether you've got the original or not, if you run or play a d20 fantasy game, you need this book. Non d20-GMs (Hero System, WEG's d6, Harn, GURPS) will also get a lot out of the rich non-rules material.

This book is a longer and improved update of the previous addition. It looks cleaner, includes some new elements (the specialist class for PCs, flavor text, new and reorganized skills, more feats, three prestige classes (guildmaster, militia leader, and spellcrafter), magic items, an appendix on work areas, about 30 expert types (like miners, blacksmiths, sages, courtesans, exterminators, slavers) with fully developed sample NPCs, ideas on expert advancement without combat, a chapter on guilds, and some new concepts such as convergence tasks. Well worth the price.

As a new DM, I found the material in this book to be invaluable in populating the major city for my PC's to play in. The standard WotC books provide a little too general information on Experts for a novice DM to easily dive in and begin creating a somewhat realistic world. I faced the challenge of filling in those gaps myself, but was lucky enough to come across this book at my local game seller. It is exactly what I needed.

Since I'm far from being a history expert, particularly on the daily lives of folks in medieval times, I found the first chapters describing the various types of experts (in broad categories of craftsmen, entertainers, professionals, scholars, and tradesmen) to be a fascinating read. It fully answered simple but important questions like "What is the difference between an armorer, blacksmith, and weaponmaker?"

The most valuable part of the book is the chapter on new skills. This chapter really gives nitty gritty details that are useful to my campaign. For example, there is a table in the section describing the Craft (Armorsmithing) skill with the self-explanatory title "Armor Creation Requirements, Times, and Costs". One of my PC's was looking for an armorer to craft him a mithral breastplate. I could easily tell him how much it would cost by using the DMG, but figuring out how long it would take, and who (if anybody locally) would have the skill to do it would be a much greater challenge. With the above table in hand and using the sample Expert provided in a later chapter as a template, getting this together was no sweat!

The only thing I'm unhappy with is the font that is used for many of the headings. It is very difficult for these old eyes to read. A minor quibble, but it is frustrating nonetheless.

I can't judge how valuable this book is for experienced DM's, but for an inexperienced DM that is building a world or extending an off the shelf product this is a must have!

Experts v.3.5 is so detailed that any gamemaster with a fantasy or medieval campaign and some polyhedral dice can use most of it. For the d20 gamers themselves, the ability to adventure as Experts and Specialists is a great way to liven up an aging set of tired old characters by adding new abilities. Almost anything, from sage to prostitute, is possible, with special Experts' magic items to top it off. A gallery of both friendly and fiendish d20-system NPCs and a mini-adventure fill out an already packed book.

From quickie tables to figure out towns on the fly and pre-rolled NPCs to drop in unannounced, to in-depth discussions and layouts for craftsmen's areas and the many things they brew and make, this book's contents will enrich your gaming group's world no end. The intelligently written, elegantly easy-to-use material is also made to equally apply to the townsfolk your party meets and to the player characters themself, if your group wants to broaden their skills.

I can't compare this to the original but I really like this one. Has a lot of information and is very well researched. Its clear a lot of hard work and effort went into making this book and I'm sure you will find it a rewarding experience to read.

I hadn't heard of "Experts" before I went to Gencon this year. I bought some of Skirmisher's miniatures and browsed through their books. Experts 3.5 is really unusual. It covers a niche topic in extraordinary detail and is all crunch with little fluff. It mixes "real" information in with game mechanics and "fantasy" elements. This book of classes, skills, feats, and other things, will allow me to realistically flesh out the NPCs that form the background tapestry of my campaign world. Nothing else comparable on the market.

Another great Skirmisher resource. I'm really getting to the point that if Skirmisher publishes a d20 book, I'll buy it sight unseen! Another must buy!